“Why do you stay in such a place?” the scout could not help asking.
“I’ll tell you!” Latimer stood off, looking at him, and making a striking picture as the light of the stove fire flamed into his face. “If I should leave here, it would be because I had been driven away by superstitious fears. I refuse to become superstitious. I am not a believer in ghosts.”
“Nor I.”
“I am sure that all the things that have happened have some easy solution. Some time ago I resolved to penetrate to the bottom of the mystery. Should I leave without doing that, or not be able to do that, I should always feel that perhaps there are ghosts, and such things. So, Cody, you see I can’t afford, for myself, to go away. Besides,” he added, “I came out here for my health.” He held up his arm. “Observe that arm, firm and strong. When I came here I was a shadow, without muscle or sound nerves. To-day I am a well man. I regained my health here; and I do not propose to be driven away.”
“As we both refuse to believe in ghosts, what is your belief concerning these strange things?” the scout asked. “I can’t tell you how anxious I am about Nomad.”
“That’s where you have me,” Latimer admitted. “I can’t explain it—can’t explain anything; and when I have tried to follow out theories they were always disproved. I am just waiting to see what will come of it.”
After retiring, Buffalo Bill lay awake a long time, thinking over the singular occurrences of the day. His anxiety concerning the fate of Nick Nomad was intense. Nomad had not been out of his thoughts. It had been strange enough to discover Nomad in this place, doing the work of a menial; still stranger to hear that he had married, and married such a woman as Pizen Kate; but even these things became as nothing compared with the strangeness of Nomad’s disappearance. More and more Buffalo Bill began to suspect that John Latimer was not just what he seemed; and the thought that perhaps Latimer had lured him to this place, with evil designs against him, had strong support in the dastardly attack made by the Mexican, and the other attack made by the Indian.
The scout had been here but a few hours, yet twice in that time had his life been attempted, he was sure. This made him feel that a similar attempt might be again made.
Thus reflecting, he placed his revolver ready to his hand, and lay listening.
The time was well on toward midnight, and he had grown sleepy, when he heard a sound at the door of his room. The door opened, and in the bright moonlight which flooded the room a young woman stood revealed.